Where ever I am, this is home

 

The Jacarandas with their castanet seeds

Have lost their winter yellow leaves

And in a few short weeks

Will flair their royal trumpets to the sky

Their last breath lays a carpet beneath my feet

 

Rosella’s squabble in treetops

And hop in dainty circles on the grass

Indifferent Kangaroos lounge on manicured front lawns

Magpies hold complicated conversations

Waiting to swoop – its swooping season

I’ll walk up the street and back again

I’ll walk to the end of the road – it’s not that far

A Ficus stands guard against the wild

Holding back the bush from rural suburbia

 

I am here again

For now

I guess

Wherever I am, this is home

OH THE DAY!

 What if we said

    OH THE DAY!

and threw off our warm covers

and ran out into the snow

    barefooted

and danced until our toenails turned blue

and the snow turned to slush under our feet

and the once green grass poked through

what if we loudly proclaimed the day

    THE MOST BEAUTIFUL!

even if it is cold and grey

and the snow and rain blows around us

and the fog drifting in until it hides the tops of trees

But i stayed inside

and i was warm

my pink socks tucked into fuzzy slippers

and you're drinking the tea i made you

you like it half strength with lemon and just a whiff of honey

you're watching TV and don't know how to use the remote

 

And maybe there are not many days left like this

with you

so inside my head and on these pages i shout

    OH THE DAY!

    IT IS SO BEAUTIFUL

to spend some hours quiet with you.

A Good Poker Face

 

I don't think i have one

a good poker face that is

if you know me

Everything is written

all over my face 

how i hold my body

i'm not good at sneaking up

or sneaking around

or keeping a (good surprise) secret

my glee bubbles up loudly 

it is not confined within my skin

 

I can however keep a serious secret

i don't really like them

there are already too many

buried inside me somewhere behind my face

its self preservation really

i try to forget them

so i do

is forgetting the same as secret keeping?

 

So i don't think 

i have a good poker face

or maybe i do

i have never looked at my face from the other side

only you can tell me if i do

Sleep Lidded Visions

 The other night

    as i closed my eyes to sleep

after they adjusted to the dark

    the colors behind my eyelids

danced dark blue against black

    a whale shape

    or maybe a shark

fins sleek against it's body

    drifting from the top

of my closed eyed vision

    to the bottom

I fell asleep

    wondering if sharks see

visions of humans when they sleep

 

 A few nights before

    more tired than i should

i closed my eyes to see

    army green and and neon pink shapes dancing

the dark green a steady haze

     the pink figures cavorting

across my sleep lidded vision

    appendages ziggy zagging

against the disco ball green

    if i choreographed the moves

it would be all arms and legs

    thrusting out and whipping back

straight lines bent

pushing against the edges of the darkness

    at the sides of the dim greenlit stage

                (no one should dance under green light)

neon pink pulsing shining figures

    it wasn't a lull to sleep 

but a slap in the face

    of my dream time self

 

    last night

as you readied yourself for sleep

    i closed my eyes on the still lit room

wondering what shapes and colors awaited

    it was only the dark of closed eyes

i pressed my fingers to my eyelids

    finding once again the green with pink figures

this time indistinct

    disappearing when my fingers lifted

I don't remember falling asleep

    I woke up remembering i dreamt

but not of what

I wonder what i'll see tonight

    shapes and colors or just the dark.

 

 

OF BRIDGES and Jumping onto Sharks

 

 

Imagine if you will a blistering hot, sweltering, afternoon. The air is thick with humidity and the slight sticky sweet smell of burnt sugar cane.

 

My friends and I hop on our bikes and head to the river to swim. And one of the best places to swim was down by sportsman creek bridge where the grass slopes easily into the water.

 

Sportsmans creek bridge was a single lane, wooden bridge when cars drove over it would rattle and shake, I remember that sound so clearly.

 

The creek runs into the mighty Clarence river which in turn, runs into the pacific ocean, we were pretty close to the headwaters so on high tides the salt water washes back into the fresh. Creating our little brackish slice of heaven.

 

I was going to tell you a story about growing up as country kid in rural Australia, telling you fun stories of running bare foot through the snake infested paddocks, about riding cows, and jumping off bridges on to sharks.

 

I wanted to tell you of the hot summers and how the roads melted. The feeling of old wood as we walked across the bridge in our bare feet….

 

This is not that story, this story is about fear.

 

If you close your eyes can you recall what your fear feels like? Is it; Sweaty palms, a sinking feeling in your stomach, goose flesh creeps down your arms, your heart beats faster and breath catches in the back of your throat, your voice fades from lips.

 

Back to the Jumping off bridges, it really sounds more dangerous than what it actually was, honestly the bridge wasn’t that high and the creek was pretty deep and well, I’d jumped off way higher things.

 

Have you ever jumped off something really high? As I kid I was unafraid of heights or really much of anything. Maybe you jumped off the high dive? Or even just a cannon ball into the pool, or better yet was there a rope swing over a water hole? Or maybe you too jumped off a bridge into the water. Close your eyes, remember the smell of the water, nervous laughter escapes your lips, it’s your turn, you climb over the railing and standing on the wooden beam a few feet over the water, your back against the too hot metal railing, its almost too hot to hold. 2 small steps and you fling yourself off the side of the bridge…You fly….for a moment and then falling through the air for an amazing second and splash too soon into the water, bubbles fizz around you and river weed tickles your feet you as you kick once and your head pops above the surface, gasping for breath, swimming to shore triumphantly.

 

No sharks were harmed in your attempt to jump on them, you didn’t even get close.

 

But the thing is, I don’t actually remember the bridge jumping, I remember being told I jumped off that bridge, I remember getting in trouble for jumping off the bridge.. … but I don’t actually REMEMBER jumping off the bridge. I remember jumping off other things, but not the bridge.

 

 I painted you a pretty picture though…almost like I was there.

 

Did I tell you that I am afraid of heights? I don’t like walking or driving across bridges, or standing on balconies, looking out windows of tall buildings or not so tall buildings. The thought of standing on the sky deck at willis tower makes me want to hyperventilate, 2 years ago when I took my mum on a hot air balloon ride it required chemical assistance and a death grip on my husband’s arm.

 

And I wonder at what point did I become afraid? Is it the natural progression of growing up and discovering your mortality, or was it the fear instilled in me by the person who, upon finding out about my adventures in bridge jumping, and cow riding, who in fear for my safety lashed out in anger.  Everything that I wanted to do was bad and dangerous and I could get hurt or someone could come along and hurt me… I had to be careful….why can’t you be careful?

 

didn’t I know there were bad people out there, didn’t I know that I could get hurt? Why would you let someone one else tell you what to do…. You need to listen to me and do as you’re told….

 

it sounds like the punch line of a bad joke; well if what’s his face told you to jump off a bridge, would you…? …well it was actually my idea.

 

So the sharks, the sharks sound dangerous right?

But really they were pretty small, only about a meter and they were mostly nocturnal, bottom dwelling carpet sharks. Their mouths are not made for people biting. So even if we did manage to hit a shark it wasn’t like it was going to hurt us.

 

If you hurt yourself you’ll get a scar, and pretty girls don’t have scars, do you know what happens to girls who have scars?

 

I will disown you if you get a scar.

 

How many times do you need to be told something until you start to believe it? How long did it take for me to hate just walking over bridges?

 

I wonder who I could have been if the I didn’t have that fear placed upon me, fear of failure, fear of being hurt, fear of new things fear of my otherness of my own adventurous nature. What if rather than remember the belting I received from jumping off the bridge, what if I remembered the feeling of flying through the air, of hitting the cool water and swimming across those sleeping sharks to the riverbank.

 

Who could I have become if I had realized sooner that it wasn’t my fear, it was someone else’s?

 

And that it was not a fear of heights, but fear of the punishment from being myself. And that to escape punishment I had to squeeze myself into a different shape, a shape dictated by someone else. How often do we change our selves to escape fear or punishment? How does that fear change who we are? Does it change us permanently?

 

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions.

 

It’s been a long time now.

 

I am no longer afraid to be myself, but I AM still afraid of heights.

 

Of Home

 

I’ve been thinking about home a lot recently. I have two of them. I have been thinking a lot about who I am when I am in each place, that I’m different depending on where I am and who I’m with, this isn’t just about who I think I am, it is who I am here and who I am now and who I am wearing these clothes or those clothes or who I am when I’m with you or in another country, the other home. The one far away from here.

 

And home to me smells like:

Sunshine and Eucalyptus,  Sugar cane fields burning and the ocean

It smells like spices cooking in my mother’s kitchen

And fresh laundry hung outside in the sunshine

The air just before it rains, It’s Sunscreen and bug spray

 

And how your skin smells after you’ve sat outside in the sun for a little too long and it smells like hot air and dust. And feels like hard packed earth and the brown grass that has been baking in the sun and it’s crunchy and there’s nothing green left and everything is muted shades of dull green and brown and grey and you think everything is dying or already dead

 

It’s so hot that the power lines sag to touch the street and then the power goes out, and the asphalt has melted from days and days of unrelenting oppressive heat, and you don’t ever remember the last time it rained.

 

When there is absolutely no relief and you’ve run out of water in the tanks and the back dam is a desert of cracked earth and sadness.

Just before the fires start… the gum trees come alive, suddenly woken from their slumber releasing eucalyptus scent in the air and bursting forth with fluffy yellow and white flowers. The wild orchids like the heat as well, the kookaburras don’t care.

 

And at dawn and at dusk they laugh at us, they laugh at us as if to say, you strange flightless birds, why don’t you just fly away.

 

But we can’t because this is our home.

 

And so, we wait for rain. The thunderstorms roll in darkening the sky with wind, sound, and light and nothing else. The deafening sounds of cicadas doppler around the house, singing their songs in the dry grass and dust.

 

The cacophony of silence, you would never know it was so loud out in the bush.

 

You city people thinks the country would be peaceful and quiet, how wrong you are. The bush is usually so loud, but when it’s dry as a bone thirsting for any hint of moisture the hush seems like a threat.

 

Each time the sun rises the birds remain quiet, too thirsty to call, you know, no rain is on the horizon. It’s home still and you make plans for the inevitable fire and you decide you will fight fiercely for it when the fire comes, you bring the animals inside and you get the long hose out and you use what little water you have left to wet down the house to keep the sparks from catching.

 

As the winds change and fire front swings round to face you.

 

 Animals and insects stream out of the bush towards YOU, the only safe port in this fire storm. Everything is a tinder box and there is nowhere left to go. The banksias burst their seed pods and gum trees sizzle, fire sometimes makes new life possible…A wet hanky across your face and tears streaming from your eyes…eucalypt fires are the worst.

 

The hard wood smolders for days without any visible flame and then the wind picks up and everything is awash in a sea of dancing red and orange.

 

And then one hint of moisture and everything springs back to life in a riot of verdant greens and fornicating frogs. The ground was so dry that the sudden water just washes over the earth without really sinking in.

 

The water tanks are full, but underneath the earth is still bone dry, don’t let the lascivious calls of horny cane toads tell you different, no amount of rain will break this drought 20 years in the making.

 

Waters fill dams, streams, rivers, the sudden massive flow with nowhere to go washing out roads and now the ferry is tied to the banks and the bridge is out and there is no way around, you’re stuck at home without parental supervision because they get the message too late that all roads are closed.

 

After a few days the earth soaks up the water and now the heat is different, the sudden humidity makes it hard to breathe, and the washing never quite gets dry on the line, and it feels like swimming when you’re walking, and you start to sweat straight out of the shower, and at least you can have a shower because you now have water.

 

But everything has come back to life and new growth bursts forth from the ashes.

 

This home is a study in contrasts, a maelstrom of mixed emotions and conflicting states. I think this conflict has shaped my being…

And it’s not like that here. Home here is different. It’s not quite so stark in its contrasting seasons, or maybe it is. Summer   / winter. Back there wet / dry.

 

This is the place I have lived the longest in my life, the place where I have built my life and my community, the family I have chosen. Home here is a choice and It’s the feeling of electricity of just before it snows, everything covered in white and the hush that falls upon the world.

 

The metallic taste of the air after a heavy snow fall, and the crunch when soft snow freezes a bit after a few days. I remember the first time I saw it snow, well it was only a flurry really.

 

But I ran outside in my too thin clothes and danced about childlike in my happiness catching snowflakes on my tongue and trying to hold them in my hands to see, I mean really see if every snow flake is actually different.

 

Home is bagels and cream cheese and packet apple cider (my first ever American meal).

 

Home is wood floors and vanilla scented candles and summer by the lake. This large body of fresh water doesn’t smell like the ocean, but it sometimes looks like the ocean, if you were looking at it sideways through sun glassed squinted eyes. I can almost forget sometimes.

 

And while home here is different it still smells like spices cooking in my kitchen.

 

And sometimes when its humid I forget that one country isn’t like another and there is a certain color of sky that tricks me into believing I’m somewhere where I’m not and the birds don’t sound the same, and that’s ok cause at least they’re not laughing at us.

But I wonder who I am in this place

And if When you look at me and you’re with me

What do you see? Am I different here?

Am I different there? And who is the only person that has seen me in all of these places? (And maybe that’s why I love you.)

 

That you see me where ever I am, and to you I am always me. But to me I’m always different.

And sometimes I feel like an outsider and imposter

(yes there’s a name for that I know)

 

Changing my identity, changing my skin to suit the situation, a chameleon if you will. Maybe, if you were looking at me in the right way, sideways, through sun glassed squinted eyes.

 

And here, well, I’ve got an accent

 

And you don’t really know what I am, but you know I’m not from here. And you love to hear me talk and I wonder if you are really listening to what I say. You probably think I’m English, or from New Zealand.

 

I am whatever I think you need me to be, or whatever I think I need to be right then. I’m Australian when I’m here, I’m American when I’m there, or maybe I’m still Australian, but I’m not “really Australian” because I don’t really “look” Australian (or so I’ve been told).

 

And I don’t really sound Australian anymore…yeah, I know, YOU think i sound Australian, but trust me Aussies don’t…and also I’ve never really been told what an Australian is supposed to look like, and you can’t really say either, but you probably know that it’s not me.

 

And all of this to say, I am split and my home is in two places and I am from both and neither at the same time. I am a bridge.

 

Performed at Pour One Out At Volumes Book Cafe Chicago Illinois February 2020

Love, Friendship and Glow Worms

 

I thought I would start at the end and see how we get there.

 

So the glow worms are both actual and metaphorical.

 

My dad used to say that the light at the end of the tunnel was the train coming in to hit you. Which tells you a lot about him.

 

But I think that the tunnel as a metaphor for life. its ok if we don’t see the light at the end, it means the tunnel keeps going, and in the darkness if you take the time and look up, there is always the possibility of glow worms.

 

I recently watched this really stupid, surprisingly touching, terrible short series on Netflix called Dash and Lily. About 2 teenagers, they are both 17 living in NY city. They are both self-confessed weirdos and they “read too much” (if that was such a thing). Lily is a biracial girl of ½ Asian and European decent. It is just before Christmas and Lily is lonely because her parents are out of the country, so in a desperate attempt to not feel alone, she writes a dare in a notebook, with the help of friends she leaves the notebook for someone to find at a book shop.

 

Along comes Dash – your typical gangly white boy, dirty blond, floppy haired, voice pre-maturely deep and gravely. He seems “world-ly” and mature for his age…So they write each other and dare each other to do things, Dash of course hates Christmas and Lily desperately loves it…you get the drift. Shenanigans ensue.

 

And I was surprisingly touched by this romantic comedy. And god damn if Dash didn’t remind me of my first real boyfriend with his dirty blond floppy hair, too deep slightly gravely voice and faux intellectualism. And oh, I was a lot like lily when I was her age. A bi- racial girl who didn’t fit where she lived, a bookish, awkward teenager. And I too fell in love with the idea of someone who didn’t really exist. Someone who I thought was interesting and intelligent, kind, an intellectual, someone who was certainly more interesting than anyone from the small town I was from. At the end of the story Dash and Lily meet for some sort of romantic evening in the bookshop and that’s sort of where that story ends.

 

 and I wonder what happens next for them…  I hope there isn’t a sequel, but I’ll probably watch it if there is. I don’t recommend it, or I do, I don’t know.

 

This is where the story of Dash and Lily and my story diverge….but it got me to thinking about the choices we make when young that change the direction of our lives and who helps us along the way.

 

I met this boy, the dirty blond floppy haired one, I went to the big city to study, I moved in with said boy. I made a lot of choices knowing that forging this path would disappoint members of my family, aka my father. Lily is so afraid of doing things to disappoint her family that she rarely makes waves and when she finally starts make her own decisions, I think she behaves in a very self-centered way. I was never terribly afraid of making waves, or I was but did what I wanted anyway. Are we anything but self-centered at 17? Are we anything but self-centered now?

 

Is there any point in dissecting our lives when we were this young? Am I still the same person, in most instances – I sincerely hope not? But this is just the start of the tunnel and we may have just turned the first corner.

 

So, let’s skip a head a few years in my story, so I’m in the city studying and living with the dirty blond floppy haired fellow. And surprise! it isn’t going so well, and I knew that the relationship wasn’t good anymore, if it ever was to begin with, but I didn’t know how to break up with someone who so desperately loved me. Any time we talked about how things needed to change, he said he would do better, and he would for a week. With him he had to be the smartest person in the room, any story you had he had one better, if you had an opinion, you would always be wrong. And it was much later I learned to recognize the traits of a narcissist and how they contain the people they are in a relationship with.

 

I was in my 20s and I didn’t know any of that, I was finishing university and I wanted to continue to perform, with few opportunities in Australia I was looking at going to the UK to live and dance. And i thought here is a good opportunity to leave the relationship by leaving the country. I know this is a terrible way to break up with someone. But I felt like I had no other choice.  I could leave without hurting this person, I didn’t have to be the bad guy.

 

But somewhere along the way I met this OTHER person – who lived in a completely different country than the one i was intending to go. And if you know me you can guess who this foreign gentle man is. If you don’t know me he is currently sitting behind me slightly off camera. Anyway, this is where is tunnel splits in two.

 

It was after Christmas and sometime around New Year and 2 friends and I decided we needed a break and so we rented a small house a few hours outside of the city for a long weekend getaway. The house was I think in the Southern highlands and we drove out to the middle of nowhere with everything we needed for a long weekend.

 

I remember being sad because I had finally managed to somehow break up with the bad for me floppy haired one, I was dealing with the emotional fall out of ending a long relationship, and also because I was wondering what to do about this foreign fellow was falling in love with. He had just left back to his country of residence and I wasn’t sure when I would see him again.

 

Now my friends and I didn’t have any long heart to heart conversations, there were no deep and meaningfuls in the middle of the night. We just hung out together. 3 good friends, reading, eating, napping, swimming.  And Here’s a picture….

 

this weekend was another turn in the tunnel, another step closer to where I am now. I don’t think I had any major epiphany’s, but in some ways major life changing things were taking place inside me. I was thinking about the sort of person I want to be by thinking about the sort of person I want to be with. Or maybe I’m making all this up because …hind sight….

 

Close to the cabin was a series of caves and abandoned tunnels, and one was a fairly well known for housing a colony of glow worms. I had never seen a glow worm, and I was so excited for the possibility of glow worms! We thought we would stop on our drive home and explore the glow worm cave. Part of the reason we went to this particular cabin was that it was close to the caves. But for a reason I no longer remember, we didn’t actually make it to see the glow worms. But I don’t think that really matters.

 

Over the years there are been more friends and other great get away cabins. And they all have the same things in common, a desire to just be together and do…well not much. It is in the moments of stillness and quiet that I feel most connected. If I can be in a room with you, on the same couch even and be relaxed and comfortable to not have to say anything at all. Are some of the best times in my life and I have found over the years that I crave these moments. These are my points of light in the darkness the glow worms in the tunnel of life.

 

SO I do really  think that the tunnel is a metaphor for life and its ok if we don’t see the light at the end, it means the tunnel keeps going, and in the darkness if you take the time and look up, there is always the possibility of glow worms.

 

The darkness in the tunnel doesn’t really matter, as long as you have friends to light your way.

ForgottenWords.

(sometimes i write things in the middle of the night, and i dont remember writing them)

The pinacle of right

The spectacle of right

Shines a light on that we wish to forget

        open mouthed

        shame faced

We walk with shoulders hunched

        head dropped

        as if it were raining

Softly softly words spoken 

In rhyme and rhythm to confuse

        building beats

        describing mean feats

        onomatopeia

        spitting words

        building worlds

         only to tear them down

Like a sculptor with his chisel

    revealing or concealing

The truth told in form flattery or fiction

Using a certain diction

        the Chicago beat

Words like rain on the streets

        (words like blood run on the streets)

Mean feats of mad poetry

         cannot control or dispel

The feeling or call to action

 I know nothing

        of that which i speak

        i  pass

And life can be difficult enough

Maybe this is not my lesson

        but one from another life time

        if only i could remember

If I am not myself 

    then i will be another

    THE other

Living a new lesson

This life time foretold

I am not yet old.......

*un-edited

 

 

Pricilla Princess of the tall Grass Sea

Pricilla Pricilla
Standing in a field
Over grown and paint pealed

Pricilla Pricilla
No longer looking for love
But you were once

Pricilla Pricilla
You once sailed the world
A home for a restless boy

Pricilla Pricilla
He's long gone now
No one loves you anyhow

Pricilla Pricilla
Lonely in your tall grass sea
A home for the restless breeze

Pricilla Pricilla
You sail across my dreams
Like I never sailed you across the sea

Pricilla Pricilla
I'll come back to you
And know I'm home

Pricilla Pricilla
I'll be sad when you're gone

A speech for a Gala

Chicago is the traditional homelands of the Council of the Three Fires: The Odawa (oʊˈdɑːwə), Ojibwe (Ojibway) and Potawatomi Nations. Many other Tribes like the Miami, Ho-Chunk, Menominee (muh·naa·muh·nee), Sac and Fox also called this area home.
Located at the intersection of several great waterways, the land naturally became a site of travel and healing for many Tribes.
We make this acknowledgement to bring awareness and understanding of the history of indigenous peoples and their territories, and as a call to rethink one’s own relationship with the city, the land and the environment.

I was thinking about this, I realized that all of my life I have lived by large bodies of water, an ocean, a river, a lake. And so too have I lived my whole life through dance – as I know many of you have –
And I think of dance and movement like water, we can cup it in our hands if only for a little while, hold it in containers to be used later, to satiate our thirst or wash ourselves clean. Water knows not about boarders, races, cultures, ethnicity, it is in all of us, it IS all of us. It gives itself to all things without distinction or judgement and settles into the smallest spaces with deliberation. It moves us by force, raising all, the cool stillness calms, and great waves carry us to where we never thought we would go.

This for me is dance, this for me is what we do, See Chicago Dance is the tide that rises all, we help you carry your audiences as if across oceans, or playfully across puddles. We fill your cup when needed through programs, services, advocacy and research.  - If the dance community are the ships we are the ocean that moves you forward.
We aim to fearlessly inspire this ever-growing inclusive community to share in, and spread the power of dance in Chicago. And our mission is to advocate for this field and strengthen the diverse range of dance organizations and artists By developing audiences while also creating a more cohesive dance community.  

We have had a year full of change and success with the 8^th annual Chicago Dance Month and the first ever Day of Dancer Heath, The third Summer Dance Village in Wrigley square and 2 Moving Dialog Events. Not forgetting to mention the many other programs and services we offer, like reviews, the dance floor, and online marketing assistance. For the coming year we hope to continue and expand these programs. 

Tonight we recognize two great people Amina and Lou who have given so much to our community, we celebrate them as we also celebrate this city’s vibrant dance ecosystem. I ask you all to help us nourish this waterway, and sustain the whole community.

The Poet

My lover is a closed book, begging to be opened wide and read aloud

Your skin an empty page upon which I write my desire

Written with the edge of my nail into your softness

My fingers dance in cursive text

Tracing lines that have been hidden from view

Inscribing my own in the margins of you

Saliva is my indelible ink tracing words of lust onto your skin

Writing lines of poetry with my tongue

Voraciously I will write you

Supping on the ink pressed from your pages

You taste like saltpeter and ash

I will discover your palimpsest secrets

As you gasp and sigh into me

Slowly I will tease out those hidden words

I have only begun the first page

I write your skin onto mine with fingers finding sticky pages pressed together

Filling my dictionary with your cries

Teasing with teeth and lips and tongue the sweet words you want release

I’ll write my name across your flesh in no words anyone but you and I can decipher

( to be read aloud as part of a performance)

The Cartographer

Finger tips gently glide over the frame of your face. Pulling you to me, my hands mold the lines of your nose and lips, the heels of my palms towards your eyes, fingers entwining your hair, grasping and pulling your head back to stretch the soft skin and expose your neck.

Breath gasps from your throat, suddenly tight and vulnerable, I have done nothing but expose a desire.
My hands release your hair and trail down to your neck,
circling, finger tips finding the hollow where your neck meets sternum.
Palms flat against your chest pinky to thumb, measuring and recording the breadth of your body from nipple to nipple, the length of your spine as I turn you to face the wall. 

Arms over head, palms flat, legs spread. 

I will press myself to you, gauging inch by inch breath by breath how my body lines to yours. 

I will measure you with the length of me. How we fit together, your back to my front, how our curves and creases meet bone and hard lines melts to soft.

I breathe you in, you smell like dove soap and winters cold.
I am taking my time cataloguing you. Call me a cartographer, for I shall map your every surface, inside and out, I will chart new pathways into you to find the hidden places where you didn’t know pleasure is found. 

My lips trace the ridges of your vertebrae and teeth sink to goose flesh raised waiting for my tongue to taste.

Arms circle, fingers playing the piano of your ribs.
Leaving red lines from my nails across the skin.
I will not play gently, but not so hard as to break. 

I can taste sweet tension, heat rising from your body in waves as my hand smacks against waiting skin, tight with sudden pain and heat, my lips caress the red raised palm print. 

I know you want to turn from the wall.

The rise and swell of your desire like tides across your body for me to sail, to conquer, I will ride your salty waters and deliver us safe to new shores.
Gently fingers lap at your firm flesh, teasing highwater, I will traverse your folds and waves until your lustful ocean breaks free.

I said stay still. 

Your breath ragged, like the rocky shore line, I will slide my body between the wall and you, bringing you to me, I wrap one leg around your hips, your hands still against the wall, I will pull you to me. 

And we bask in this estuary.

Call me Captain, for I have sailed these waters, bucking my body on your rough seas until the storm passed to lay calm and cool in this safe harbor.

Circular Reference

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circular reference

Repeat it enough

Do you ever repeat a word over and over and over until it loses all sense of meaning and you wonder what the hell happened and how and why did someone put these random letters together to form this word and make it mean this abstract thing. How do these random letters pushed together convey the concept that is this word. And how after the 1,000 repetition it still means nothing.  Tonight that word is enough, enough, enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough I am not enough. enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough I am enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough enough

Time and Tides

I lost myself
On a beach on some foreign shore
Walking on distant streets

I lost myself
While looking for the shapes in clouds
While watching the heavens circle

I lost myself
While the snow fell around me
While I listened to the rain

I lost myself
In the warmth of the sun
While wrapping myself in scarves

I lost myself
And with every breath
I forgot a little more of who I am

I lost myself
While trying so desperately to find something real
Seeking, reaching, searching

I lost myself
While trying to make something of... myself
While trying to fill this body with experiences

I lost myself
To time and tides, oceans and clouds
To cherry blossoms and rain

I lost myself
With words and music
With love and beauty and pain

I lost myself
And now that I know I am lost
I can begin to find myself again

God of the Television

God of the television
offers 1.800 toll free confessions
                        he'll even send you a free pamphlet
on repentance or maybe acceptance
                        and all is forgiven
For no money at all
                        you just need to call!
Just call and confess
                        did we mention the free pamphlet?!
absolved of your guilt
                          by a voice mailbox
probably in Tibet

One Small Voice

My response to an overwhelming situation
is to withdraw, because once again i am heartbroken
Every day brings a new death
another person taken from this world
for no other reason than hate and fear

And i am but one small voice
in the tide of outrage
I'll keep my anger in check
and give you nothing but love
while tears run down my cheeks
and my heart breaks over and over

Fear and anger does not solve hate
only love and a strong will to survive.

Blue Ink Ants

They left the room. I didn't see them, but I knew they were there and then gone.

They left me a blue pen and one piece of paper. I opened the pen and pressed the tip to my fingers, the blue ink spreads like the red ink in my veins does when they cut me open. It's been so long like this, ten times dark and shadows and more, I lost count after a while. And I wonder if the next breath will bring something new. There are endless possibilities outside window they say - who ever they are - But I am here behind these walls, with only my small window for light.

I lift the pen from my fingers and press it to my wrist. If I hold it just right it makes pretty drop shapes and runs like ants down my arm. I lift my arm and turn it so blue ant drops can make paths all the way as far down my body as I can make it until it plops, splat, dead on the floor. Never mind, I lift the pen to make another ant drop somewhere else, making criss-crossing paths and many dead ant drops around me on the floor until there is no more pen blue ant drops and the window is dark.

If I lie still and breathe silently I can hear other things beyond the wall hum and hiss. I feel more then I hear though, vibrations while I lie on the floor, the scurry of blue ant drops as they slide away under and outside my window. What is outside? Why do shadows slide across the window? Sometimes they linger making tap tapping, any noise apart from the hum is not unwelcome. But they make the thing in my chest move and shift, and I jump up to the window, too late. I can't reach anything anyway, so what does it matter that I even try, but I sometimes see faded blue ink outside so I jump and jump.

Apart from that, all there is, is sleep, blue pen, one sheet of paper and time for more blue ant drops to run on my skin. There are no words on the paper. I write on my body (between the ant trails), I draw stories on top of stories, they get smeared and faded over time, but I can remember each one of them. Every bit of space that I can reach is criss-crossed blue. In some places, so heavy that once dried, it flakes off leaving bare patches like when you pull bark from a tree. I have wrapped myself in a bark of blue ink and stories. Only my back, the place I cannot reach to write, is free from the stories. But not free from the ink ants and their trails or from the scratching of my blue fingers. I drag them across my back so my skin becomes bark. The only story my spine tells is one of pain, I don't need to write it to know.

I've never seen a tree, but I know they exist. They walk outside my window, I think the trees are the ones that cast the moving shadows and the tap tap tapping at the edge of my hearing. The trees have branches like mine (though made were made by the blue ant drops). I dream that one day they will reach themselves through the window and wrap me in twigs and leaves and bark. I think it is called an embrace. The animal in my chest shifts when I think about this, it gets restless and runs. It runs and runs so fast that I have to breathe fast to keep up, it runs and runs but always stays inside me, I don't know where it is trying to run to. If I could, I would reach inside and eat it to make it stop all the run running. This useless creature inside me, I think it has long branches as well because after run running it reaches down in my chest squeezes out my air. I gasp and the room spins, then the floor pulls me down and I sleep.

They came and took my pen, they would have taken the paper as well, but I ate it. The paper is inside me now so now I can fill it with blue ant branches, and memories of the tree fingers.  I can tell the stories to my chest animal, I tell it stories to make it quiet and stop its run running. It gets so scared because there are no more blue ant drops and because more and more bark comes off my skin and when that happens there will be no more stories. So it run runs and reaches down with branch fingers and squeezes out my air.

Before they took my pen away,  I was running out of body paper so I had written stories on the bottoms of my feet, they were so blue blue that I could print walk them across the floor and the walls like I was running up the walls to the window to look out. I cant jump anymore, my chest animal wont let me, I'm stuck on the floor with the dead ant drops and my bark peeling bit by bit. Soon there will be no more blue and I will be new again with fresh space for write dreaming and ant drops. The trees walk past the window, more light and shadows than I can count. I have forgotten all my stories.

Today they left me a green pen.

Distance Between The Darkness

We left the stars
and the long dark night
for the bright lights of the city
only to miss the deafening silence

We loved too much and ran too far
we forgot ourselves among the lights
we chased the light around the sun
and back again to find the same stars
waiting for our return

These city streets and colored lights
are beautiful in their own way
but nothing like the unfettered night sky full of galaxies
and the distance between the darkness

Solve for X

What is the weight of love?
Does it have mass?
Does it have density?
Does it have shape or volume?

If we say love weighs heavy our heart?
Exactly how much does it weigh?
An ounce, kilo, stone, or pound?
Or maybe one ounce too many,
Until it breaks.

What do we mean when we say love lifts us up?
Does it defy the laws of gravity making us lighter?
If gravity is the force that attracts two bodies together
What then, is the force of love?
Does this mean that love is gravity?

How do we measure love?
Is it measured in mills or grams?
Or is it length, distance or size?
I will love you for 5000 miles, but not one more inch?

If my love for you is great?
Greater than what? The sum of us, our separate parts?

Does love have volume?
If it cannot be contained within a cup
or in the palms of my hands
how can it then be contained within a heart?

Does love have shape or form?
Can I hold it and touch it?
How can I shape love into something
I can hold and touch and feel if it has no form.

How can we calculate love?
Is there a formula to quantify and qualify?
Can we solve for X?
And find out how much we love each other?

How much do I love you?
I don't know. I'm not good at math.